"A great addition to the 87th Precinct detective novels!"

I've been a fan of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct books for years. This one seems to poke fun at detective novels in general while solving the case, of course. I caught myself chuckling several times at the antics of Ollie and other members of this cast of characters that only Mr. McBain could create.

Ollie Weeks of the 88th Precinct is the first detective at the scene of the murder of Councilman Lester Henderson when he's fatally shot at Martin Luther King Memorial Hall getting ready for a political rally. It seems as if there could be quite a few suspects in this case so Ollie gets Steve Carella and Bert Kling of the 87th Precinct to help him out on the case.

While Ollie is in the Hall questioning everybody someone decides to break the window of his car and steal his Gucci dispatch case with the book he wrote in it, all 36 pages. He was getting ready to take it down to Kinko's to make copies. So now while he's investigating the murder, he's investigating this theft as well. All he has left of this 'best-seller' is the last chapter.

The junkie who stole the case thinks that the book is a real report to the commissioner using code names for the location for stolen diamonds and he decides that he'll solve this mystery and keep the diamonds for himself.

As usual, this is quite an entertaining read. It was also intriguing in the fact that Mr. McBain threw out several red herrings so that I had to wait to the very end to find out who the actual murderer was. Not only that but the second mystery of what happened to Fat Ollie's book was an interesting sideline that kept the story going. I was happy to see all the characters of the 87th Precinct back in this tale and eagerly look forward to the next 87th Precinct story.

Reviewed by Kathy Boswell
Posted December 23, 2002